Li, Wendy Wen, Miller, Daniel, Rouen, Christopher, Yang, Fang, and Yu, Huizen (2025) Mental health among Chinese university students during COVID-19: 28-month, ten-wave longitudinal study. BJPsych Open, 11 (2). e56.

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Abstract

Background: The cumulative effects of long-term exposure to pandemic related stressors and the severity of social restrictions may have been important determinants of mental distress in the time of COVID-19.

Aim: This study aimed to investigate mental health among a cohort of Chinese university students over a 28-month period, focusing on the effects of lockdown type.

Methods: Depression, anxiety, stress and fear of COVID-19 infection were measured ten times among 188 Chinese students (females 77.7%, mean age = 19.8, s.d. age = 0.97), every 3 months: from prior to the emergence of COVID-19 in November 2019 (T1) to March 2022 (T10).

Results: Initially depression, anxiety and stress dipped from T1 to T2, followed by a sudden increase at T3 and a slow upward rise over the remainder of the study period (T3 to T10). When locked down at university, participants showed greater mental distress compared with both home lockdown (d = 0.35–0.48) and a no-lockdown comparison period (d = 0.28–0.40). Conversely, home lockdown was associated with less anxiety and stress (d = 0.19 and 0.21, respectively), but not with depression (d = 0.13) compared with a no-lockdown period.

Conclusions: This study highlights the cumulative effects of exposure to COVID-19 stressors over time. It also suggests that the way in which a lockdown is carried out can impact the well-being of those involved. Some forms of lockdown appear to pose a greater threat to mental health than others.

Item ID:	84956
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2056-4724
Keywords:	anxiety, covid-19, lockdown, depression, longitudinal, mental health
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Additional Information:	Published open access under a CC-BY 4.0 licence
Date Deposited:	23 Mar 2025 23:46
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